


Feels Like Rain

by CupidStrikes



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, spoilers for King'sGlaive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-10-31 11:04:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10898031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CupidStrikes/pseuds/CupidStrikes
Summary: The first time Libertus sees her, he is sure it's a dead girl standing in front of him.Libertus meets Iris in Lestallum.





	Feels Like Rain

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not dead! I promise I'll be updating my When You Come Back Down and Show Me Where My Armour Ends soon!
> 
> For now, here's a drabbly little thing about my feelings for these two. Still so salty we see no Libertus in XV at all :/

Feels Like Rain

 

The first time Libertus sees her, he believes it's a dead girl standing in front of him.

 

She's all dark hair tangled around tanned and freckled skin, her eyes nearly black in the half-light of dawn in Lestallum, the street lights refracting a flecked rainbow of stars across them, and although he's walked all the way here from Insomnia with the barest amount of sleep and food and water to keep going, this is the most tired and worn Libertus has felt since the night of the Treaty Signing.

 

It must show on his face because her mouth purses and forms words that Libertus hears but doesn't quite process as he remembers cold skin sticking to his palm and grey blossoms eclipsing the same brown that's approaching him now, and the hand on his arm feels so fleetingly warm and fragile -

 

“Crowe...”

 

The girl cocks her head to one side, her short hair tickling the tops of her bare shoulders and when the girl bites her lip the familiarity of the action feels like a fist in his gut.

 

“I'm sorry,” the girl is saying, twisting her fingers into each other before reaching for his arm, her grip soft on his elbow belies the strength he can see in the way she holds herself, and that too he knows well enough to hurt.

 

“I'm sorry,” she says again, and as she leads Libertus follows her, trusting the stranger as she weaves them through the narrow sidestreets and alleys of the city until he's disorientated and sure that he won't be able to find his way back without assistance.

 

“What's your name?”

 

He realises belated, when she asks again in one of the more common Galahd tongues in an accent split with native Insomnia intonation, that she is talking to him. He pulls his tongue from the roof of his mouth.

 

“Libertus.”

 

It feels foreign in his mouth and he thinks, briefly, back to the last time he heard someone speak his name – Nyx, it was Nyx, in the fire-shot darkness of Insomia and -don't think about it, not now, don't think about I – and he realises he has spoken it with another's lilt and syllables, but it's too late to take it back and when the girl repeats it he believes again that he's facing a ghost, a fever dream and maybe he's still out in the wilderness between Outposts, bleeding out or delirious from exhaustion and waiting for a rogue MT or monster to finish him off.

 

_Libertus meets Crowe on the ferry to the mainland of Lucis. Galahd, a smoking ruin behind them, and the air heavy and bitter with blood and ash, a cacophony of voices on every side of him calling out for family, friends, laments and prayers mingling into one deafening wail. He's never had the stomach for boats; the waters are rough, the weather poor for sailing as it was, without the craft being far overcapacity and pitching back and forth, moving as much sideways as it was forwards. It takes just ten minutes before he heaves over the side, clutching the rough wood until splinters come away into his palms. He squeezes them against the side again, the pain grounding his stomach out somewhat as he risks a look over the other refugees. He recognises a handful, barely, Nyx silent at his side, his eyes closed as if in sleep, were it not for the way his hands are clenched tight in his lap, twitching every so often towards the sheathed blade at his hip._

 

_He's content in condemning himself to leaning over the edge and staring into the water for the duration of the trip when someone grabs his shoulder from behind and thrusts a handful of leaves into his face. He turns with the hand, a curse already on his lips, but it dies when he sees not Nyx there as he had expected, but a young girl, all wild hair and wilder eyes._

 

_“They'll help with the sickness,” she scowls at him when Libertus doesn't react immediately and makes to take her hand back, stops when he steps forward (down and to his left Nyx shifts just enough to let on that he's alert and watching). The girl pushes the bundle of herbs into his hand, her fingers rough with callouses and half-healed cuts._

 

_“Thanks.”_

 

_She nods once and looks all like she's going to walk away and disappear back into the crowd beyond._

 

_“What's your name?”_

 

_The girls cocks her head to one side, her eyes flicking up and down him, to Nyx, back again, and then to the people around her._

 

_“Yours first.”_

 

_“Libertus.”_

 

_She repeats it, her accent folding the syllables and Libertus grins around the single breath of her name._

 

 

* * *

 

 

“What's your name?”

 

“Libertus,”

 

Libertus shakes his head and looks down at the girl. She stands a head shorter than Crowe, younger by a good few years, and he wonders if she were even alive when Galahd fell, when the outer territories burned under Nifleheim Magitek and guns as Insomnia does now.

 

“Iris.”

 

She holds a hand out to him and when he takes it her fingers are strong around his the pads and palm ridged by sword-training. She shakes his hand once, twice, and then releases his grip and smiles so sweetly at him despite everything that Libertus can't help but think that even with a second home smouldering behind him that there is still more to be done, if one girl can still be cheerful amidst it.

 

“All the refugees are gathering here in Lestallum until....until Noct defeats the Empire and comes home.”

 

He smiles as she talks and nods, and when she turns to leave he stops her with a hand on her shoulder.

 

“We'll be waiting.” He promises and when Iris grips his hand in two of hers he squeezes back just as hard. The light from the oil lamp catches the moisture threaded in her eyelashes and as Libertus folds her against his chest and feels her bird-bone thin shoulders shake beneath his hands, he holds the memory of another girl closer for just a second. With grief and loss palpable in the pits of his lungs, Libertus breathes out and lets the sensation run throughout him until he feels alive within every inch of himself.

 

**Author's Note:**

> And then they skipped off into the sunset to kill daemons and MTs together and when Iris ran for Prime Minister in the restored Insomnia Libertus helped her design her campaign posters and everything.


End file.
